


The Stranger I Know Best

by theleaveswant



Category: Secret Diary of a Call Girl (TV)
Genre: Anonymity, Community: kink_bingo, F/M, Gen, Polyamory, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-29
Updated: 2010-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-13 10:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/theleaveswant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>two writers, one of them also a professional escort, discuss the allure of being known and not known</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stranger I Know Best

**Author's Note:**

> General spoilers through end of series three (I kind of detest the second and third series for how they sour the sex- and sex work-positive vibe of the program, but I'm keeping their continuity). Draws specifically on events and people from 1x02.
> 
> Written in the early summer of 2010 for the "anonymity" square of my Kink Bingo card but never posted (I posted my Losers story "Roll With It" instead). I like it, I just didn't feel ready to share it then.

I'm looking over notes on the latest book draft on my laptop in the cafe when a man stops next to my table.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks.

I gesture at the empty chair.

“Cheers,” he says, and sits down. “My name's Jay.”

“Hannah.”

“Pleasure.” His accent is unmistakably Edinburgh. “So, what do you do, Hannah?”

“This and that.”

“How's that going?” He reaches out with his spoon and skims a blob of cream off the top of my hot chocolate.

“Swings and roundabouts.” I reach out with my own spoon and steal half of it back.

“Not one for playing things close to the vest, are you?” He licks the spoon and chuckles, same as the first time we met here, four months ago to the day.

*

It didn't take any mental Rolodex to recognize him this time, sipping Guinness with his shirtsleeves rolled to below the elbow and looking, somehow, even more delectable than he did two years earlier. Distractingly good, in fact; it takes some effort not to abandon my conversation to stare at him. Jay Lorre. It never crossed my mind, when I got into this whole writing business, that it might bring me back into his orbit. How did it not click for me that the hosts of this do were his publishers too?

He's seen me now, glancing sideways at me with a puzzled expression, and I can feel my pulse speed up. The design assistant I've been speaking with leaves me to chat up somebody else and he takes the opportunity to saunter my direction.

“I know you,” he says, leaning past me to set his empty glass on the rail.

“Not quite,” I answer, smiling coyly. Is he teasing or does he really not remember? “We have met once before.”

His eyes go wide. “The play party! About two years ago? With the dress and the, erm, feathers? Your name is Belle.”

“I'm so pleased you remembered,” I grin. I'd have been mortified if you didn't.

“Are you joking? I don't think I'll ever forget you. Every party we've been to since I've kept my eye out. I'm embarrassed I didn't know you right away, but. Another context, and you look different—stunning—as a blonde. How have you been? I hope everything went alright after you left us that morning, your what was it, 'personal reasons'.”

“Good, really good for the most part. You?”

“Fine.”

“Is—erm.” I make an 'around?' gesture, blushing over forgetting his wife's name. Assuming, that is, that I ever actually caught it?

“May? No, she couldn't make it tonight. What are you doing here, if you don't mind my asking?”

“Trying to sell a book.”

“Really? I had no idea you were a writer.”

“I wasn't, then. It's a bit of a recent development.”

“Is this your first?”

“Second, but I find myself in need of a new publisher.”

“Oh, what happened?”

I wince. “Bit of a long story.” And still rather a fresh wound.

“Perhaps later then. What was the book?”

I lick my bottom lip. I did open this door myself, I suppose I should walk through it. “Well . . .”

He steps closer, apparently charmed by my hesitation. “That's quite an expression. Now I have to know.”

“You've probably seen it around. It's doing quite well. Bit of a sensation, actually. Sort of a memoir. But it was published—it hasn't got my name on it.”

He laughs. “What, are you the infamous London Call Girl?”

I look away and scratch my neck.

“My god, you are!” His smile changes but doesn't disappear. His eyes are bright with interest. “So that means—”

“Could you keep it down, please? I'm not exactly 'out' in public.”

“I'm sorry. The night we met, you were there in a professional capacity? That 'boyfriend', he was what, a client?”

“I can't disclose that information.” That's so obviously a confirmation, shit. I should have avoided this entire conversation, but his work has been a part of my life for so long that it feels strange to remember that he doesn't actually know me.

“Well in that case I'm even more honoured that you were willing to forsake your duty to come home with us. I don't think it's possible for me to get any more disappointed that you didn't. Is all that in the book? I'm sorry I haven't read it.”

“Not all of it. Listen, you really can't tell anybody about that, alright? I've made a few mistakes lately that have, well, compromised the privacy of some other clients and colleagues. Some of them might have deserved it, most of them didn't. I won't let it happen again.”

“Mum's the word. Not that anyone would be likely to believe me if I did tell—I am a novelist, after all. I'm curious though—if I'd have asked you then what you did for a living, what would you have said?”

“I can't tell you now. It wouldn't be fair to anyone else who uses the same cover. Why do you ask?”

“I'm wondering how many other escorts I've met over the years without knowing it.”

“More than you think, probably.”

“I suppose it must be especially helpful for you not to get recognized by people who know your work—your written work, that is. I can imagine the approaches, the expectations, might get rather uncomfortable.”

“Does that happen to you very often? People approaching you because of your books?”

“More than you think, probably.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Don't be. What I feel around you . . . 'uncomfortable' is not the first word that springs to mind.”

“But you don't enjoy being recognized?”

“Not exactly. I find it disturbing talking to people who know who I am when I don't know them.”

“What disturbs you about it?”

“It's not really fair, is it? That people should come to me, open up to me, give me control over their emotions, as if having my name on a thing they can buy makes me more important or powerful than anybody else. And at the same time I have no control, because I have no idea who they are or whether anything they tell me is true, which I suppose is the case with any first meeting but it feels so much starker when they know your name without asking. It doesn't really matter what I do or think because I'm like a fetish object, the statue of celebrity, rather than real person. They know who I am, but they may not know me at all.”

He's obviously given it some thought. “You seem very passionate about this.”

“Aye, passionately ambivalent. Which I suppose accounts for why it turns me on so much. It's a strange kind of tension to be like that, known and not-known, at once powerful and powerless. Much easier to explore at clubs like the one we met at than out in the real world. Hang on a minute—are you doing it to me right now? Like in your book, sussing out my secret fantasies?”

“You said you hadn't read it!”

“Well, I haven't finished. I was going to take it on the plane tomorrow, I'm off on a North American press thing.” He smirks. It is fair, I suppose, considering my abandoned effort to pretend I hadn't recognized him last time. “Are you?”

I bat my eyelashes, innocent. “You're the one who brought up turn-ons.”

“Do you get the same thing? Not as a writer, if you publish anonymously, but in your other work. That same presumed intimacy. People acting like they know you because they know what you do.”

“I cultivate it. It's much easier to keep control of people when you know what they expect.”

“It's a pseudonym, isn't it? 'Belle'. A smokescreen.”

I purse my lips and nod. “My real name is—”

“Ah, don't tell me! Not yet. I told you I liked the mystery.”

“I'm not sure I do. Sometimes, absolutely, but it gets hard being a mystery all the time. Even a mystery people think they can see right through.” That's a lot more wistful than I like to get around strangers. I feel more naked now, with him in my respectable-author drag, than I ever do at work in garters and sweat.

Jay smiles slowly and leans in so that his mouth brushes against my ear. “I'd like very much to unravel you, in whatever ways you want me to.”

My breath catches. “I'd like that too.” I frown, head muddy with his smell and the heat of his proximity. “I've got a client tonight.”

“That's fine. I can't do anything until after I've checked with May, even if I know what she's going to say—'have fun and tell me all about it when you get home'—and I try not to interrupt her dates save in dire emergency.” He steps back, strokes a hand down my upper arm. “I'm going out of the country for two weeks, but when I get back I'd love to meet you for a coffee. Can I get your number?”

“Why don't I give you a time and place instead? We can meet for the first time all over again.”

He returns my fae grin. “That works for me.”


End file.
